Episode 340 - Many experienced professionals assume their work will speak for itself. But during redundancy, career change or a difficult job search, they often discover that their reputation has not travelled with them. In this episode, Vanessa Errecarte explains how to build credible visibility, use AI without losing your voice, and become easier to remember and recommend.

Renata Bernarde  00:21

Vanessa, you are an award-winning marketing lecturer, a consultant and an author. You created one of the United States’ only for-credit MBA courses in personal branding at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. You have also written a book challenging the common belief that personal branding is primarily about self-promotion.

Instead, you argue that professionals should build stronger reputations by creating value for others and demonstrating useful, original thinking, which I one hundred percent agree with. I invited you here today to discuss what this means for my audience of experienced professionals who have spent decades becoming excellent at their work but have never intentionally built their visibility beyond their current organisation. Welcome, Vanessa.

Vanessa Errecarte  01:14

Wonderful. Thanks so much for having me. I love your work and I’m really excited to be here.

Renata Bernarde  01:19

I think I’m going to open up with a broad question that my clients, my audience, they have built this career and they believe that their work speaks for itself. That’s usually the background of all of our discussions about being on LinkedIn or going out and talking about themselves.

What happens when they discover, often after a redundancy or during a difficult job search, that their work has not travelled with them?

Vanessa Errecarte  01:48

I think that if you are a millennial or older, you were trained to believe that being excellent at your work was enough. In fact, being excellent, and perhaps a little more excellent than everyone else, seemed to prove that it was enough because you kept getting promotions that way.

Now, all of a sudden, we are in a workforce with digital natives. Gen Z grew up on three screens at once. They did not know until they were older that there was once a pile of photos you could hold and look through. They just knew swiping. It is amazing when you think about it.

While we see a division between our professional selves, our skills, our personal selves and what social media is or is not for, they are not thinking about those distinctions in the same way. There are now enough digital natives in the workforce for that thinking to influence how people are discovered. A résumé is no longer necessarily the first place someone encounters you.

What does this mean if you feel a little behind? It is never too late to start, as with most things in life. There is always a place for you on the internet. The problem is that when most people start, they do what everybody else does: they talk about who they are.

Vanessa Errecarte  02:47

Things in life, right? There’s always a spot for you on the internet. But the problem is when most people start, they do what everybody else does, and that is talk about who they are. You know, here’s a day in my life. Today I was really excited because I did this initiative at work, I won this award, whatever it is, right? But then when you think about who you are as a consumer, you

Renata Bernarde  02:52

Mm.

Vanessa Errecarte  03:12

Who do you stop for? Who do you notice? Who do you remember? You don’t remember brands that are just talking about how special their product is. You remember those brands that say, these running shoes are special because you may be able to be more comfortable when you run and not get shin splints, right? We have this special technology, you know, you don’t care what it is, but we have the special technology that makes that happen, right? What is it that will help you overcome something? And then you may stop your scroll. And so actually, I was hired at

UC Davis to teach digital marketing and corporate branding. And I started realizing that when people brand themselves, they get it all wrong. We forget the best things that we do in corporate branding and digital marketing to show people that you know this brand is here to help you and improve your life. That all goes away when we simply talk about ourselves because it’s I don’t mean to sound, you know, I don’t know, not

Savory, but we’re all a little selfish when we’re looking for what we need online, right? We don’t necessarily care about other people’s achievements, but we do care if they give us some advice that really helps us.

Renata Bernarde  04:15

I agree. I’ve been talking about this for such a long time. It’s wonderful to have a guest that validates the sort of coaching that I do. And it seems like capable people, and as you mentioned, from a certain generation, right? So they underestimate the value of being known, but then when they find themselves needing to be visible, they don’t know how to be visible.

Can you can we dig deeper into what has changed in career progression and recruitment that has made that visibility so important for corporate professionals?

Vanessa Errecarte  04:49

Two things, both on the side for the organization and for ourselves. So let’s go organization first. So this hasn’t actually changed, but I think people are starting to realize it more. On social media, which is a great discovery tool. I beg to differ that there’s other great digital tools to build the relationship, and we can get into that, but to be discovered, social media is a great place. You have a lot of users on there already, right?

But the personal travels further than the organization. What I mean by that is if you post something on a corporate page, it’s not going to get as much visibility as if an employee is talking about something. That’s just how the algorithm is, because social media is social, and the CEOs of these social media companies know that we stay on the platform longer when people are sharing personal information and from their own personal voice, people relate to other people more than they relate to organizations.

Organizations

Making the shift.

To empowering more of their people to speak on their behalf. That’s very important organizationally. Now what’s changed on the personal side is like this elephant in the room, let’s just say it: AI. And so AI is, I don’t I really take the view that I don’t think AI is eliminating jobs as much as it’s shrinking them. You know, so where you used to have this pyramid where you had you know more entry-level jobs and a bunch of them and then it got smaller and smaller, now it’s more like a rectangle because AI is taking care of and assisting with a lot of functions

Down at the bottom, especially. But you still need people to watch over it. I mean, smart corporations have started to really realize the limitations of AI. And so what I tell people that means for them is they have to act like they’re not at entry level sooner. And the way to do that is, you know, again, show your knowledge. How can you help people overcome a problem, etc.? And

Maybe a solution these days is instead of looking for that full time job that we think is the norm, I actually don’t think it’s the norm anymore. I think the gig economy is the

Economy and so how can you position yourself kind of as that consultant and find a few of those projects? You’ve probably noticed yourself that there’s a lot of companies that are still looking for project-based and part-time work, especially with AI, as like one job may become half a job, right? And so I think on the individual level, realizing that we’re in charge of kind of our own destiny and thinking more like the consultant that is constantly looking for that new client anyway, is the smart thing to do is.

Far as the job hunt goes. Because then even if you are going from full-time job to full-time job, you still create that pull-marketing effect for yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to be recruited instead of having to turn in a resume to that next position? And that’s very, very possible when you show people exactly where you can help the best.

Renata Bernarde  07:34

Yes. Are you s such an amazing thing what you just said, because I was with a client just now and we were discussing exactly that. The market is showing her that she will probably do very well in the gig economy, but generationally I find that because my clients are experienced and usually Gen X, i and millennials, but mostly Gen X.

They still want permanent roles. And even when she said, Okay, but I still want a permanent role, what I explained to her was that,

Tha her career still she still has fifteen, twenty years more to go. And, you know, building that visibility for her and getting that visibility strengthened because she already has great rapport and strong networks will just make it easier for her as she gets older and more experienced. So it is so interesting.

Renata Bernarde  08:25

Although the other problem that I have that I see happening a lot with my clients is they become very interested and maybe even a little bit addicted in being visible once they start, let’s say,

Posting on LinkedIn and my concern is that visibility doesn’t really translate into authority. Can someone be very visible but have very little genuine authority?

Vanessa Errecarte  08:52

Absolutely, and when that happens, which as you say it happens frequently because we think the answer is volume and showing up more. But that’s another thing with AI, a lot of people can put a high volume of content out there, right? And so what people forget when they just show up over and over is they forget that they should be forming a relationship with the person behind the computer. Visibility is not a relationship. Visibility is a step towards a relationship, and so earning trust based

On value is what drives the memorable visibility. So I tell people all the time, especially these like middle to upper management folks that you’re talking about, we get a lot of those in our MBA program that are trying to, you know, move up, pivot, things like that, right? And you’re hitting this kind of career wall.

Because you’re trying to decide what that looks like for yourself. You’re trying to get that next opportunity at the same time that, you know, all these opportunities now are changing with AI. And what I realize is a lot of times this happens not just online showing up, but networking too.

The easiest way to be forgotten is to introduce yourself like everybody else does, right? The easiest way for your cover letter to like blend in is to just repeat key points of your resume.

We know that top line, when you’re trying to attract someone to you and gain their trust, it’s all about that emotional connection. What can you do for them, right? When we think about personal relationships we form, you know, we’re not going to spend our time to form a relationship with someone that may not bring something we need to our lives. You know, have you ever been at that point in your life where you’re like, I really could use a new friend right now, or I don’t need new friends right now, right? Like we’ve all been in these situations.

And it’s no different with the job search. And so what I always say to people is you need to find the thing that no one else can be. And we all have that. We just have to use our brains to find it instead of like look for the answer with AI or search tools or something like that, because those answers already exist if we can find them somewhere else.

And so I always say start with this: whenever you go to like present yourself to someone or respond to someone, instead of introducing yourself, like, hi, I’m Vanessa, I teach here, I have this business, et cetera, et cetera.

I would say something like, hi, I’m Vanessa, and you know, I’m on this mission because everyone tells people that personal branding is about you. And that’s the quickest way to be forgettable. And I think it’s really about what you can help other people with, right? And so what I’ve done there is I’ve just said, what do most people do? What’s that common thinking or trope in my industry? What’s the real problem with that? And what’s my better solution?

You know, it’s like if someone says, is the sky blue? Most people will say yes. But then some people might say, well, the real problem is you’re only thinking about half the time.

Because honestly, like the sky’s not blue all the time. So let’s think about what really is the sky. And the understanding of the better solution is like, here’s actually what the sky is, right? And so now all of a sudden that’s a signal. Someone’s going to help you, someone’s going to help you see something a different way or do something differently so that you can succeed better. That’s kind of cool. I’ll give you this example of this dentist I saw online.

This dentist was saying, evidence-based research shows that we just tell people to floss twice a day, but we’ve done a lot of research and actually it’s that nighttime floss that matters. And so if you really just don’t want to burn, you know, a few minutes in the morning, here’s what you can do with those few minutes to get better oral health.

Because you’re already flossing at night. And I’m like, I’m going to stop my scroll and listen. He just offered me value and then I try it, and all of a sudden I’m like, ooh, my teeth look brighter. That’s where the trust comes in. Now he helped me. Now I’m going to go back and I’m going to see what else he has to say. And that’s how building works. It’s everyone says marketing’s about growth. It’s really like the memorability. The memorability drives the growth. And you have to trust someone to remember them.

Right, because they’ve given you something. So again, that’s what this overvisibility is not necessarily gaining that trust, which is that’s what comes from the value.

Renata Bernarde  12:45

That’s so interesting. A couple of things that I wanted to share with you and with the audience as well is that example is so great. I think that what people find hard is to translate that example when they work in a corporate environment and have an employer and they really don’t know how to position themselves individually outside of the work environment. So what you said before about companies asking their especially senior leaders to post on, let’s say

Platforms like LinkedIn. We see, you know, the Instagram CEO posting on his Instagram account regularly. And of course we all watch that because he’s always giving great advice. So we can see that when you are part of an organization, representing the organization, that makes sense if you are reposting things that they are asking you to do. It’s when they need to do it by themselves, separate from

Renata Bernarde  13:39

Their organization that they kind of don’t know how to position yourself. Do you have any advice for that?

Vanessa Errecarte  13:46

Yeah, I mean I think the art of the segue is so important there because most of the time we can relate something personal to how our work goes. So I’ll use one student as an example, two students that are very have different examples that I think can help illustrate the two extremes. So I have one case study where this optometrist came through the MBA program, wonderfully talented woman, Dr. Lisa Hornik. She herself had dry eye disease. She started challenging, like, we think this problem solved with eye

Drops, but would you prescribe eye drops for an autoimmune disorder or diabetes? And she started talking about like eyes, you know, not only being the window to the soul, but the window to physical health and what you can tell if someone has dry eye, like what are the underlying conditions that could cause that, or you know, what are like screen time even, or you know, too much Botox or whatever it is, let’s get to that underlying problem.

And then she started working, you know, spearheading new treatments as well, right? Like eye drops can kind of perpetuate a problem that’s not solved with a dysfunctional oil gland, right? And she would talk about how in extreme cases people would lose their driver’s license because they couldn’t see, that could lead to depression, all this. So she really became this person who re- you know opened this area of study in her industry. And it just so happened that she could tell about personal stories and you know, do some treatments on herself, all that.

That’s a great example. If your personal brand is so in line with your professional brand, right? But then like I’ll use Arman as another example, Arman Batal, and Arman is Sikh, but that’s how we say it. It’s actually called Sikh according to him, but that’s his religion, his Sikh religion, right?

And he says that generations below him, he’s also he’s a millennial, generations below him aren’t dressing traditionally, we’re forgetting the culture, he says, because there people are embarrassed. And so they’re just trying to mould into the surrounding culture, and he’s afraid that other than its origin country, that is going to be a dying, you know, culture.

And so he purposefully like dresses traditionally. He has started like promoting Sikh art and clothing that he has on his social media profiles. And how does he relate it to his work? Well, he’s a project manager, and he was a project manager for years at Union Pacific Railroad, and he would travel everywhere we never go, because he worked for the railroad. And he had multiple times, more than I can count on my hands, that he told me that he was profiled in some way, verbally or physically, for his appearance.

How does that allow him as a project manager to be a better manager? I can think of so many ways. And he would talk about that too. So I always tell people: follow your passion and then find that underlying thing, that middle of that, like those two circles, that Venn diagram that brings the two things together. So for me, it’s like I love helping people gain visibility, right? But my professional life, when I have these clients, right, they’re more in the corporate realm.

But when we look at, you know, like the job search or professional development in more of a marketing light.

Here’s the ways that I think I can bring things to the table, right? So it gives me kind of thinking really hard about what’s important to me personally, helping others, bringing others up, the instructor, the teacher in me, right? And then professionally that marketing, you know, being excellent at marketing, how can I put that together? You know, for me that happened upon personal branding being my personal brand, right? This new approach. How can I put something together to find that commonality?

Renata Bernarde  17:09

I love that. I think that’s really important. And when I’m working with clients on their strategy, I usually ask them to put the elephant in the room out in the open. Right. So if his attire or has been an issue and he finds that he might be profiled in a job interview, let’s talk about it. Let’s bring it up.

Vanessa Errecarte  17:20

I think.

Renata Bernarde  17:30

You know, as you can tell, I’m a Sikh and you know and this is part of my culture. And that makes it very uncomfortable for the selection panel to then have a an a conscious bias against.

Vanessa Errecarte  17:42

I love that.

Renata Bernarde  17:43

The candidate.

So, you know, we usually bring that up. And I also like to include that as a leadership strategy. So for example, if you come from let’s say India and you’re now working in the US and you’re in marketing, that is a disadvantage for you because you don’t have a good network. So one of the strategies that you could implement is to start developing content for LinkedIn where you compare ad campaigns in India and

In the US. I’m new to the US, I’m in marketing, and this is what I’ve noticed is different between how we run marketing campaigns in India versus how we’re running marketing campaigns in the US, and start building on that, building on that so that people can see that he’s now settled in the US and he has all this expertise and he has you know a unique niche of knowing, about India if that is my maybe a market segment for a specific.

Specific organization. So you start sort of playing around with these things. And it’s counterintuitive, Vanessa, because a lot of people just want to blend in. They want to be like everybody else and be generic when employers are actually looking for uniqueness. That’s also a problem with using AI, don’t you find? Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte  18:53

Imagine Yeah. Yeah.

No, it’s absolutely right. And imagine if that person could then say, Here’s one way you can take an ad targeted to the US market and here’s three simple tweaks you can do to repurpose it. Here’s what I notice every single time I see these two things. Here’s the three common things that make it different and here’s how you can save time.

And appeal to the Indian market as well. And you mention AI, like that takes the human brain to solve those problems, You could upload them all into AI and you could see what AI can analyze. But again, I always say when AI gives an answer, that’s a signal to find the deeper answer. So whenever I give my students an assignment in any of my classes, I’ve gotten to the point where I say, go solve this case in AI first. Turn it in. Don’t

Don’t do anything, just ask AI to do it. Then rewrite it how you would write it. Add your own ideas, you know, edit the ideas you like. And it’s amazing. There’s still such a realm.

Of an outcome, right? Because some people take that as like, I’m really going to take this and say, here’s what here’s what everyone says, and now I’m going to take these ideas and let it be my baseline and really take it up a notch. And our class discussions have never been so rich. And then you have people that are merely editing, And that’s what we don’t want to do. We don’t want to just take the common idea as our own. That’s when you get AI slop and sea of sameness and all this stuff. Like those are the people who like the edges of the pyramid that are that are getting cut. So we want to practice thinking.

You know, and

We can think with AI. I have this framework that I talk about all the time, I call it truth, and I went through part of it with you earlier. Like if you’re going to show someone they don’t know something, first say here’s what everyone thinks, define that, then say what’s the real problem with everyone thinking this, then tell your understanding of a better solution, tested reasoning after that, like the dentist with the flossing had to tell me that there’s evidence out there, right? And then finally, how do you act? What do you try?

Instead. That’s where you gain the trust.

So I always tell people, write a sentence for each one of those and put it into AI and say, here’s what I think my counterintuitive viewpoint is, but give me 20 things I’m missing. You may find three more viewpoints, right? Because AI gets 2.5 billion queries a day and it’s a machine, and its job is to say, out of all the information I have and everything people ask me, I need to find the answer that pleases the most people. That’s how it gets general. But if you say, What’s the uncommon, the most uncommon 20 things you’ve heard about this, right? Now your brain

Renata Bernarde  21:00

Mm.

Vanessa Errecarte  21:20

Brainstorming with AI, right? It’s like asking a friend, what have you heard that’s out of the box when it comes to this? Except AI just happens to have a much bigger sample size of people that are giving it information. We’ve never been in such a great position to think. Yet most of us instead of thinking with it, we’re just asking it for answers. And that’s really punishing us. That’s that visibility trap you brought up earlier.

Renata Bernarde  21:45

Yeah. And it’s not solving the problem that I have with my clients and listeners that these experienced professionals find it very difficult to be visibly

Public. So they are delegating that visibility to AI by asking AI to write posts for them and write comments for them. And I can see everybody can tell if you if you’re listening to this, please know that when you write something on LinkedIn and it’s completely AI generated and it doesn’t have your

Your personality in it. It’s very obvious to the reader that it’s being generated by AI. Why do you think people find it so uncomfortable to put themselves out there?

Vanessa Errecarte  22:31

Well, I think the internet can feel like a bit of a stage because of the best practices that we’ve seen. So

Only 1% of people online post like consistently, and then 10% of people post, and then the rest of us lurk. That’s crazy. And so, when you’re putting yourself out there on a regular basis, you’re like one out of a hundred, and that does feel like you’re under a microscope. And no one likes that. That’s why I say like we’ve gotten personal branding all wrong, because what we look at that we think is personal branding are influencers.

Influencers have full-time jobs. Influencers are every day making some kind of generalist entertaining content so that they can get people to notice them, brands to notice them, they can feature brands in their posts, and they can make money off of it.

And that again, that’s a full-time job. And they have to show up over and over and over because they’re doing similar things and following similar trends as everybody else so that they get the visibility. And what did we talk about the visibility trap? You show up and you’re forgotten off the feed. Because you haven’t gained the trust, right? You’ve just entertained enough to get the eyeballs, the views. And so then if you’re selling something in the right moment, you make some sales because you’re going after that big follower account, right? And so people see these people performing. So I once

Made this viral video because my students challenged me too. They’re like, you say it’s the long game, you say, you know, virality doesn’t matter, but like you’ve never gone viral. And I’m like, yeah, you’re right. I will. On spring break, I’ll go viral.

So my husband and I were traveling with our kids, and I followed this trend that I had seen on Instagram and TikTok, and it was this funny thing where my spouse cannot tell the difference between being in an airport and being chased by a bear. Because my husband’s like the type of traveler that gets all stressed out, needs to get there early. And so I had a bunch of funny clips that I had taken the whole morning of like him, you know, all stressed out, putting his belt back on because he forgot and it set off the metal detector, and then he got through security after me, even though he had TSA PreCheck.

Renata Bernarde  24:19

Uh-huh..

Vanessa Errecarte  24:30

And so many funny things happened. And it’s funny that it happened to him And if we start filming clips long enough throughout our day, any of us can find entertaining content like that, right? And so then three hours later, I find which clips to put together to make like a one-minute video about this. I do all the captions, I find the trending audio voiceovers, and at the very end I zoomed in and I said, by the way, I zoomed into the airport bookstore. I said, by the way, my book’s coming out, you know, on May 5th, right? Tried to make it relevant.

That post got 50,000 views in a day, but the engagement rate was less than 0.4%. It was like 0.38 something, something, on and on, right? Now let’s contrast that with marketing posts that I make. Those get around 5 to 10% on average, but even more on some posts when I make a post about personal branding or digital marketing how-to’s, right?

And

So it’s interesting because like I may have gotten a lot of visibility from that viral post, but it didn’t sell me any books.

And so people get fatigued because they see what influencers do every day. They have to do that. They have to do that so that they can sell a few things when the time comes. But if you gain that trust and you’re memorable and you have the right audience because you’re on brand with the thing that you’re teaching and helping with, then you’re attracting the right audience. I don’t care if you have an audience of ten, if two of them are going to, you know, buy your book, let’s say.

That’s much better than those hundred people who are going to lurk and laugh at funny content and be like, I don’t care about her book. Wait, what does she teach again? We really have to remember there’s a distinction. But that’s exactly why people hesitate, because, they see the majority of influencers because the rest of us are sitting back there like the internet has no place for me because I don’t want to show up like that.

And you don’t have to. In fact, one of the easiest things you can do after you kind of make a written post teaching someone about something is put a few steps into a framework and call it something, like name it after like job. You could, you know, three steps of whatever you’re teaching, you could say job or run or whatever, right? That automatically elevates your information, number one. And number two, then just take your iPhone.

And press record. And I’m doing it right now. And I’m going to go into selfie mode and I’m going to say, Hi, I’m Vanessa Errecarte. Today I’m going to talk to you about why we’ve gotten personal branding all wrong and why I am going to show you some tips about being remembered and not forgotten, which we tend to do if we treat personal branding about us.

This was a very imperfect 13 second video that I just took. I stumbled a little bit. In fact I can I can replace some of it. Hi, I’m Vanessa Errecarte. Today I’m going to talk to you about why we’ve gotten personal branding all wrong.

Sure. You even saw that like the angle was kind of funny under my chin and stuff, but if I posted that

That would show the authenticity. That’s definitely not made by AI. It took me 12 seconds to make. And we have research that shows that bloopers actually convert 20% better. And when we looked for the correlation why in the industry, it was because people felt that authenticity. You know, so while we may state that we prefer perfection in ads or whatever, side by side, the way we behave is we watch things longer when people have spinach in their teeth, because we actually know secretly that’s more like who we are.

Renata Bernarde  27:39

I’ve I always tell my clients you want to be relatable, not perfect. And that’s usually a good way of thinking about it. I think the other concern that people have if they haven’t really worked on their personal brand and in being visible is that sudden visibility that they feel they need to have now that they are unemployed. So all of a sudden, they’ve heard about this, but they did nothing for years or months and now.

Vanessa Errecarte  27:43

Yeah.

Mm-hmm..

Renata Bernarde  28:05

They were they’ve been laid off, they find themselves between jobs. And I think what they feel is like everybody will be looking at them, you know? And that’s probably why they feel so reluctant to then start when they are unemployed.

What advice would you give my listeners who are between jobs, unemployed, and feel very concerned about that sudden visibility?

Vanessa Errecarte  28:29

Yeah. I mean I have no reason to care if you can help me with something, right? And that’s what we need to understand is if you’re talking about what your job is or what it isn’t, you’re talking in marketing we would say you’re talking about features of yourself, not benefits. And you need to focus on how you can benefit people, how you can give them that transformation. So what you’re able to teach me in your head has not changed just because you’re currently working as a project manager or you’re not.

Renata Bernarde  28:44

Mm.

Vanessa Errecarte  28:55

I mean, if you’re not currently working as a project manager, but you put a post up, for example, about, hey, have you ever noticed when we go to, optimize the process and review the, the output that step one to four usually of this process work really well, but step two kind of like stymies step four a little bit. And if we did step two with just this one different thing, like I’ve noticed throughout my career how much it changes things, and now I’m on a mission to help

You change that as a product manager. Now, if I’m a project manager, I’m going to like stop and listen because they’re offering me info. Not one part of that kind of a post online is about whether or not you have a job. And then even on your bio, you can write, you know, project manager, seasoned project manager helping you become a better one. And then what happens is you form a secondary audience. People that may hire you go, wow.

They’re that good at teaching people how to be better. I want them working for my company.

I always say, think of your employment status, your degrees, all of those things that we think are the most important. Think of that as the window sticker on a car. In marketing, we know that people want the car based on what they think the car is going to do for them. They may be able to show prestige, They may be able to show that they are being good to the environment. They may be able to show that they bought this sensible family car.

Whatever they want to portray, that’s kind of why you buy your car. And then you look at the window sticker to make sure it has the engine that you need and all that, right? That comes second. People go find that information when they think they want the car. So it’s that top line emotional connection we need to focus on. And you know this because you talk about cover letters and the connection in cover letters, right? Is that’s the opportunity to add the life to the resume. It’s not the opportunity to repeat the resume.

Renata Bernarde  30:45

Yes. I’m so glad you mentioned that. People often hate cover letters. And I’m a big, big fan because it gives you extra opportunity to share a little bit more about yourself and explain some gaps in resumes and whatnot. But let’s go back to

To the concerns that people have. There’s one more that I wanted to get views on. And it’s when people say, All right, you know, I’m already so busy with work and I have family

And now you’re asking me to also, do this job, it feels like a job, a chore of going online and doing LinkedIn and what’s the minimal viable visibility strategy that you think works for somebody that has that demand and has that view that this is another chore? I mean, I feel that until people start getting

The hang of it.

You know, when you’re starting something new to get the momentum is so hard and they don’t really see the benefits yet, so they might not be so inclined to do it. Once they start, once my clients stop, they actually continue, which is lovely. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a client that has worked with me two years ago still constantly posting on LinkedIn, even though they have a very good job and they don’t really, you know, need you know to be on LinkedIn anymore. But they

Vanessa Errecarte  31:47

Yeah.

Mm-hmm..

Renata Bernarde  32:08

They

Do, they do, because that is what’s going to keep their career sustainable over time. What do you think for a person like that is a minimal strategy for them to start off with?

Vanessa Errecarte  32:19

Sure.

So, first and foremost, we think it’s hard because we’re looking at influencers, not the rest of us. Second, the strategy. I always say start with a LinkedIn post a week that’s really based on thought leadership. Like, what’s a personal story you can tell of, you know, either observation of yourself of why this matters, because we remember stories more. That’s the emotional poll that pulls people in. Then segue it into why this matters, right? And then teach us a framework: three steps or five steps.

Renata Bernarde  32:25

Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte  32:49

Steps, not more than five, then you have two frameworks, but of whatever it is they need to know or they need to do to succeed, that’s the trust gaining, right? And I think that’s a perfect formula for a thought leadership post with that small little video lead-in that I just showed to you. And you can do that once a week to start on LinkedIn. But then what happens is after you do that for

Let’s say three months you have 12 useful posts. That can then translate into a blog on a website. And I know websites sound intimidating, but how many just ordinary people own their first and last name as their URL and have one?

Not many people unless they’re trying to be a consultant, right? That can make you stand out a lot. Then bring your thought leadership over there. Teach the internet who you are, so that because it’s finding out anyway, when people Google you. So, how is all your information there that really elevates you as far as you know having that presence to have your own website? You could even have a newsletter that people can subscribe to. That’s how corporations get lead generation, right? That’s how you can

Build your own audience because, like I said, social media is great for discovery, but we don’t want the LinkedIn CEO or Mark Zuckerberg controlling our audience. If they decide they’re going to go out of business tomorrow, we still want our contacts, right? And so doing it more like corporate brands do it and bringing some of that thought leadership in. Another thing you can do, like let’s say you’re talking about three steps to something one week, you can take daily time and say, like, okay, today we’re going to zoom in on step one. Now all of a sudden you have four days a week worth of content.

And I always say the same thing you’ll post on LinkedIn, let that be your lead platform, go post it on Instagram. You’re not trying to post the most trendy viral stuff to get followers, remember.

You’re trying to get the right audience. And Instagram’s becoming more and more of a thought leadership place. Like people are reporting that they go there to discover brands, discover ideas. So it’s cool to be on Instagram as well. You can even auto-post it to Facebook to get more of the very, you know, top generation in the workplace type audience. And again, no, not a lot of extra work there. I also say, like, if you do that small video lead-in, you need to post it on YouTube automatically so that you can embed it into your website. It’s a very simple.

Renata Bernarde  34:50

Mm-hmm..

Vanessa Errecarte  34:59

Process and you can do it on simple website software like WordPress, which doesn’t take a lot of time. But again, now you’ve covered the video part of the internet and Google owns YouTube. And so I created this process really where starting with one LinkedIn post a week and getting comfortable, then you can build slowly on the different things you do. So that within a few months, for one to three hours a week, you can really be doing all of your personal branding online because.

Consistency is the most important part of this. You know, you stop showing up, you stop having a relationship with your audience. So

It’s very important that you start something that you can continue. And so if I ask people to do it more than one to three hours a week, I know my busy grad students aren’t going to do it. And a lot of your busy executive clients aren’t going to do it, right? And so that’s how I design the formulas to build on each other and to be like that, you know, that minimum viable product concept that came to be in like the 90s and 2000s, it’s like, what’s your minimum viable personal brand?

Renata Bernarde  35:56

Okay. Can I can I add to that? Because I love everything you said. But I have a couple of other ideas as well that I want to share with you and the audience.

You said you said something at the beginning about the influencers and one way of identifying how your peers operate is to check them out on LinkedIn. Just go to people that are like you on LinkedIn and if you go and find that many of them are not posting, you have a competitive advantage if you do. Don’t think that because they’re not posting you shouldn’t post. I think it really depends. Very rarely I have a client that works for a government department, that has a social media policy, that,

Has some restrictions on what they can and cannot post and we work around that. But LinkedIn has so many other ways of connecting. For example, you can send private messages to people, especially if you have LinkedIn Premium. You can use the comment function of LinkedIn instead of posting to build thought leadership by comment purposefully under some like a CEO of a company or somebody that you admire in your

Profession that has written something they would love if you liked and commented on their post. The other thing that I often recommend is to use those different platforms slightly differently. So for example I have

The best example that I have, it’s a bit old now, but there was this vice-chancellor of a university here in Australia and you would go to his LinkedIn profile and it was very corporate. So that would be cutting ribbons and launching new projects or welcoming students on campus. It will be all that sort of stuff that the marketing team would prepare for him and there was a little bit of him in the caption as well. But if you went to Twitter, you would find that he had an amazing sense of humor.

Yeah.

Renata Bernarde  37:41

So

On Twitter he was really quite funny and he would do a bit more of a commentary on some issues that were happening at the time. It was during the pandemic and international students weren’t allowed to come to Australia. So you could tell that he had an opinion about it, and it that was on Twitter, and it was funny as well. And you if you went to his LinkedIn or I think he didn’t have link he didn’t have Instagram, sorry, he had Facebook. You went to his Facebook and it was public and I always thought, that’s weird.

You would see that there were photos of his dogs, you know, if he had if he was sick, he it would be quite playful because he would be at home with a mask and saying, you know, I it got me too, and here I am in lying in bed and I’m not going to be at work today, don’t bother me. So he used platforms differently for different types of engagement with understanding the fact that he was a public figure and he was at a senior role and people wanted

To have the opportunity to get to know him a little bit, not just his employees, but also the students and so forth. So I thought it was a really interesting strategy. I don’t think it was strategic. It just happened organically. But you can now develop a strategy for you if you’re listening to this. You can use different platforms differently. I use I use them very differently as well personally. So my LinkedIn is really a way of attracting clients, subscribers to my newsletter.

Vanessa Errecarte  38:44

Mm.

Renata Bernarde  39:06

And I use Instagram especially Stories to engage with those people. Right? So they have like they are fly on the wall, and they can see that I’m you know working one day or going to the beach the next. Like there’s that sort of parasocial relationship that some of my clients want to have with me, and I’m fine with that. So yeah, yeah. What do you think about that?

Vanessa Errecarte  39:12

Yeah.

Well Yeah, no,

There are we definitely have perceptions of what these profiles are, but

One thing we have to remember too is that the algorithm is driven by humans. So companies can design the algorithm, but then we’re the ones who click, we’re the ones who slow our scrolling, we’re the ones who share, we’re the ones who comment.

And so some LinkedIn advice I do have for people is I always ask like what is it that makes you feel like you can’t do certain things on LinkedIn?

And the answer to that usually is, well, I read this article that LinkedIn promotes educational content. I read an article that LinkedIn like holds down content that’s made more for other platforms, right? But then if you have LinkedIn Premium, I challenge you, go and say, like for the last 365 days, go see what your top-performing posts were.

And usually it’s all ones that have a little bit more personal in it. And that’s why like getting used to telling kind of a personal story and segueing like for Arman, like I’ll never forget like the sixth time I was, you know, called this on a plane, I decided that I was going to do something about it. And here’s the first three steps I took, and here’s how you can do it in your own organization as well.

I know Arman much better than you know, here’s the three steps I take to solve conflict, and here’s what you can do. Right? Like the first one makes me want to stop immediately and learn more about Arman.

And then I get maybe even a little disappointed if I can’t find more about him in other posts and stuff. And so I always say like LinkedIn, it’s interesting because they try to incentivize the algorithm for educational content, but then we as humans incentivize it to see more of who’s behind the content. And Gen Z has really changed this on LinkedIn. In fact, I forget which publication dubbed it the LinkedIn ick, but instead of LinkedIn, instead of leaving LinkedIn, Gen Z is like, I’m just going to treat it like I treat other platforms.

And give people a little bit of who I am. And if a company does something to make me angry, I’m going to be transparent about it. And what we’re noticing is

People need corporations need people, right? And so, you know, there’s this different kind of just like accountability and transparency going on, and it’s an interesting thing to watch. Because again, like we always think that this corporation is in the driver’s seat, right? And what do we do to make sure that we’re being exactly how we should be?

But if enough people drive in a different way, you know, then the corporation, they still, like I said, they still need the people. And so, you know, don’t go crazy, as you know. But I always say it’s okay if you’re funny to be a little funny on LinkedIn too.

Renata Bernarde  42:04

I agree. No, you’re you’re absolutely right. And I have a little group. It’s actually in beta stage where I have about a dozen professionals inside this group. It’s a monthly subscription and we meet every week for an hour and they can send the group what they’re thinking about posting.

I’m I’m writing this article, I want to comment on this person’s post, or I want to write my own post and this is the sort of the image that I have chosen and we sort of workshop that before we post just to have that it’s kind of a little bit of a due diligence. You know, we give real feedback, we provide feed ideas to improve, and we usually end up with a much better post.

Myself included, once we workshop that idea with others. And if a post sometimes people get really angry about something and they’re working in an organization and we’re like, are you sure? You know, let’s just sort of tone it down and we have different options. How about writing it this way? And we end up with something that’s still really interesting that people want to read. But that sort of has gone through that sort of platform before it goes long

Vanessa Errecarte  42:50

Mm.

Renata Bernarde  43:17

So if anybody’s interested, I’ll put a link below for people who are interested to join the group, which is totally fine. And you can be there for a couple of months until you get the hang of it and then you don’t need it anymore. So that’s also how people use it. You do? Good.

Vanessa Errecarte  43:28

Mm-hmm..

I love I love that. I really love that because

I do. And here’s here’s why. I always say what would you do in real life? If we’re really angry about something in real life, before we go like rent a billboard on the freeway and tell people we’re angry about something, we usually call a friend and vent, right? And then that changes how we respond to the anger. A lot of times online

Vanessa Errecarte  43:55

We forget about what we would do in real life. And so when we make a faux pas, it’s usually because we’ve like in a silo thought this would be a good idea to do when it’s really not.

Another thing we do that’s weird is when someone comments on something you put out there, that’s like the highest thing that you want, right? That really helps your algorithm. And so often we just like heart it, And unless you’re like Travis Kelce, in US football giving a heart to Taylor Swift when you make a touchdown, right? We don’t usually do this in real life.

No one says, How are you doing today? And we like heart or thumbs up and walk away. But we do this all the time online, and then it like tanks our engagement when we have this opportunity to keep the conversation going. And so I couldn’t agree more with you know this group that you have because what that does is it forces us to think about our posts in real life.

You know, and that’s that’s usually the best like buffer against like some of that fear you were talking about, because it’s not just fear of like how much work it is or visibility, it really is fear of like what if I say or do the wrong thing as well. And so I think that’s so cool you have that. I can’t wait to take a look at it.

Renata Bernarde  45:02

Thank you. I’ll invite you in. You can come in and have a look. Vanessa, it’s been amazing having you here. Like I said, I think one of the best things about having guests on the podcast is really validating the things I’ve been saying so that my clients and my audience say, yeah, no. It’s not just Renata saying this, it’s an actual expert

Who’s been writing about it and has the research to back it up. So I hope that the episode will help experienced professionals or anybody really

Understand that their expertise can be recognized, can be remembered, and can be recommended through a little bit of work on your part in making that accessible to others. So the aim, as you said, is not to become a social media influencer, it’s really to help you develop your career through that visibility.

In and out of, LinkedIn and social platforms, you know, I think we didn’t talk much about doing it in real life, but I think that you can translate that to opportunities to talk about your work with people around you, be it at a barbecue, be it at a conference, it doesn’t really matter. I’m assuming there’s much more information inside your book as well, right?

Vanessa Errecarte  46:10

Yes, yes. I had a couple of students that said, Will you write a book? And this is great and make it available to more people. And I had a very imposter syndrome moment, like we all do. And then I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. And so it’s been a labor of love. And one thing that inspired me is I noticed in the same way that we all look to influencers online

Any literature I was trying to find for this personal branding class that I said to my dean at UC Davis Graduate School Management, like, I really want to teach this class. But then I go to find literature and it’s all like, get rich quick, and you know, build these many followers and make this much money for posts and all that. And I’m like, these are all influencer books. And so I decided I needed to write something that really focused on that impact and that trust building and that memorability for like the average professional that most of us in the world are.

So yeah, it’s kind of surreal to see it sitting over there.

Renata Bernarde  47:00

Awesome.

That’s so great. I’m definitely going to be recommending it to my students at Monash University. So thank you so much for writing the book. Thank you for being here. And you can come back anytime when you write your next book or even before then, you’re welcome to come back and have a chat to us again, okay?

Vanessa Errecarte  47:13

Yeah.

Well it’s been lovely and I hope we do end up having coffee in Melbourne one day.

Renata Bernarde  47:22

Likewise, I would love to go back to California and catch up with you. Thank you.

Vanessa Errecarte  47:27

All right,

It’s a plan.